On this day, June 7, 1967, three days after the Six-Day War began, the Israel Defense Forces entered the Old City of Jerusalem and took control of the Temple Mount:

In the early morning hours of June 7, the third day of the war, soldiers from Israel Defense Forces 55th Paratroopers Brigade were poised to fight their way through the Lion’s Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem. Their commander, Colonel Mordechai “Motta” Gur, exhorted his troops with these words: ‘Soon we will enter the city, the Old City of Jerusalem, about which countless generations of Jews have dreamed, to which all living Jews aspire. To our brigade has been granted the privilege of being the first to enter it . . . Now, on to the gate.”

According to a book recently published, from which the quote above was taken, the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount during the Six-Day War was the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy found in Daniel 8:13-14.

The book, Daniel Unsealed: An Explanation of the Chrono-Specific Prophecies in the Book of Daniel, Chapters 7-12, as Understood by Daniel, is a study of the chrono-specific prophecies found in the book of Daniel. In my next post, I will present a detailed review of the book and explain how the author of the book has developed a system that explains every chrono-specific prophecy in the book of Daniel. Today, I want to emphasize the prophecy of Daniel 8:13-14 and how it is related to the conquest of the Temple Mount during the Six-Day War.

The book of Daniel is a controversial book because the prophecies in the book have defied explanation. Because of the apocalyptic language of the book and because of the use of numerology to communicate the message Daniel received in visions, the book also has attracted a variety of interpreters who have proposed exotic theories in order to explain the prophecies and the visions of Daniel.

The author of Daniel Unsealed has developed a cogent system that explains and clarifies all the chrono-specific prophecies found in the book of Daniel. According to the author, the key for the proper interpretation of the book of Daniel must begin with the interpretation of the prophecy found in chapter 8:1-27, especially the prophecy in verses 13-14. As the author wrote: “The correct interpretation of that epoch-spanning prophecy is fundamental to understanding the chronology of everything else” in the book of Daniel.

The book emphasizes several times that the key to the proper understanding of the prophecies found in the book of Daniel is found in Daniel 8:13-14, the prophecy of the two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings and the cleansing of the sanctuary.

Most modern interpreters of Daniel 8:13-14 do not believe that this prophecy has a modern-day fulfillment. Most commentaries understand this prophecy to be a reference to the restoration of the sanctuary that occurred during the Maccabean revolt, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes.

The focal point of the prophecy is the proper understanding of the “two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings” in Daniel 8:14. Most commentators believe that the two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings refer to the 2300 days that elapsed from the time that the Temple was desecrated and Antiochus slaughtered a pig upon the altar until the time the Temple was restored in the days of Judas Maccabeus.

Other commentators believe that the two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings refer to the 1150 evening and the 1150 morning sacrifices which would not be offered in the Temple. This method of calculation implies that the two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings refer to 1150 actual days.

The author of Daniel Unsealed takes a different approach to the prophecy of the 2300 evenings and mornings. Instead of interpreting the expression “evening-morning” as 2300 days as does the King James Version, or as 1150 days as interpreted by several commentators, the author understands the use of the expression “evening-morning” in Daniel 8:13-14 to be identical to the same expression used in Exodus 12:6-10, 14, where the celebration of the Passover is presented as an “evening-morning” event.

Thus, the author believes the reference to “evening-morning” in Daniel 8:14 does not refer to 2300 days but to 2300 Passover celebrations. The starting point for calculating the events related in Daniel 8:13-14 and in his vision is found in Daniel 8:6, a passage that refers to the conflict between the ram that had two horns, that is, the conflict between the king of Persia and the king of Greece.

The conflict between Alexander the Great of Greece and Darius III of Persia took place at the Battle of Granicus in Asia Minor in 334 B.C. This event then becomes the key that unlocks all the chrono-specific prophecies in the book of Daniel.

Using the Battle of Granicus referred to in Daniel 8:6, the author begins to study the chrono-specific prophecies in the book of Daniel. Since the Passover of 334 B.C. happened before the Battle of Granicus, the author counted 2300 Passovers from 333 B.C. and the 2300th Passover occurred on April 25, 1967, a few months before Israel took control of the Temple Mount.

Although his approach to the prophecies of Daniel is unique, the conclusion of the author was anticipated by Adam Clark almost 200 years ago in his commentary on Daniel. Discussing Daniel 8:14, Adam Clark wrote:

Unto two thousand and three hundred days— Though literally it be two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings. Yet I think the prophetic day should be understood here, as in other parts of this prophet, and must signify so many years. If we date these years from the vision of the he-goat, (Alexander’s invading Asia,) this was A.M. 3670, B.C. 334; and two thousand three hundred years from that time will reach to A.D. 1966, or one hundred and forty-one years from the present A.D. 1825.

Adam Clark calculated the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy to occur in 1966 not because Clark counted a year zero, as the author of Daniel Unsealed seems to imply, but because he counted the events from the Battle of Granicus in 334 while the author of Daniel Unsealed calculated the events from 333, the first Passover after the battle.

I have to give a lot of credit to Adam Clark. It is easy to look at the Six-Day War and the capture of the Temple Mount and then look back and relate these events to the book of Daniel and the Battle of Granicus but it takes a perceptive mind in 1825 to look at an event in 334 B.C. and relate that event to something that would happen in 1966 (or 1967), one hundred and forty-one years into the future.

In my next post I will provide a more detailed review of the book, Daniel Unsealed: An Explanation of the Chrono-Specific Prophecies in the Book of Daniel, Chapters 7-12, as Understood by Daniel. I will also evaluate the system the author has developed to analyze the chrono-specific prophecies of Daniel.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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